WESLEY CHAPEL — Central Pasco is poised to lose another public golf course.

The owner of Quail Hollow Golf & Country Club has proposed turning his property into a gated community of 400 homes.

The rezoning request, filed last month with Pasco County, seeks permission for a master planned unit development that would convert the nearly 175-acre site into 400 detached homes and townhouses. Additionally, 5.5 acres would be set aside for a day care center and a 30,000-square-foot office building.

“This is just to get the rezoning to proceed. It could be awhile” for development to occur, said the project’s land-use attorney, Barbara Wilhite.

Jim O’Brien of Coastal Brokerage & Investments LLC in Land O’Lakes is listed as the developer. Nine months ago, O’Brien said there were no immediate plans to turn the golf course into a residential community.

However, the rezoning request is the first step toward that happening. Wilhite said the rezoning process usually takes about six months to complete. The land, in a rural density district, already is entitled to hold up to 287 homes. The zoning application seeks to increase that total.

The golf course is at 6225 Old Pasco Road, about a mile north of Wesley Chapel Boulevard (County Road 54). Its owner is Andre Carollo’s Pasco Office Park LLC, which purchased the property for $1.7 million in 2010, two years after the course closed. It reopened in 2011 after both the course and clubhouse were refurbished substantially. Read more: